Contents

Introduction

This is a brief tutorial to make the printer Brother DCP-7020 work on Arch. It is largely a duplicate of the tutorial for the Brother HL-2030, with changes specific to the Brother DCP-7020.

If you previously tried to install the printer in CUPS, remove it.

Download Brother drivers

First create a temporary directory.
Then you must download the official LPR drivers from the Brother website into that directory. Click here (and agree to their terms). This is an RPM archive.
You have to download the cupswrapper file here (and agree to their terms). This script creates the filters and PPD file for CUPS automatically. It's an RPM archive too.

Extracting the RPM files

Now you need a small script called rpmextract which allows you to get the files included in the RPM you've just downloaded.
Log in as root and execute :

Editing files to make it work with Arch

ArchLinux uses its own file system organisation, so you have to edit some files.
Use your text editor (i.e. vi) to open the file named cupswrapperHL2030-2.0.1
If you created the temporary directory "tmp" in your home, this file will be in /home/(your user)/tmp/usr/local/Brother/ .
In this file, you must replace all the /etc/init.d/ occurences by /etc/rc.d/.
Once you've finished this step, copy all of the files to their corresponding directories in your file system :

# cp -r /home/user/tmp/usr/* /usr
# cp -r /home/user/tmp/var/* /var

Installing the driver and printer

Last step !
Go into /usr/local/Brother/cupswrapper/ and run the cupswrapper file :

Under the Printers tab you should see a DCP7020 printer automatically installed and configured.
This default installation seems to be optimized for a USB connected printer, which in the case of the DCP-7020 is incorrect. Click Delete Printer. Now you can add a new printer using the CUPS browser interface and select your Brother DCP-7020. To do this :
1. Click on the Administration tab
2. Add Printer
3. Name it, Continue
4. Select LPT #1 (unless you have more than one LPT port, in which case trial and error should serve you)
5. Select Brother, Continue
6. And there's your "Brother DCP7020 for CUPS (en)" - select it and Add Printer
Click to print the test page, and you can hear the sweet sound of your printer.

Thanks to the creator of the HL-2030 page for making this much easier than I expected it would be!